IMac :: Catastrophic Hard Drive Failure - Unrecognized By System?
Nov 15, 2009
It looks like the hard disk in my 1.5 year old iMac (24" 3.06 C2D, running 10.6) suddenly failed today. I woke the mac up from sleep and pretty much immediately I got a spinning beach ball. The system was totally unresponsive so I did a hard reset. Unfortunately the blinking "?" folder came up on the gray screen, instead of the familiar Apple logo. Booted off the OS X disk and ran Disk Utility. The hard disk comes up as "media" and unrecognized by the system. So no First aid or formatting possible. I'm guessing the hard disk has given up but before purchasing a new one I want to rule out anything more serious like motherboard issues.
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May 31, 2012
2009 Macbook Pro 15.4" 4gb RAM (Unibody)HD 500.11 GB FUJITUS MJA2... I tried to install an update for 10.7.4 via the combo package. The update says it failed so I tried to install it again- every time I got to finalizing/moving things around stage of the update it would say that it failed. I believe it may have succeeded, at least partially. I went to restart my machine and now I am stuck at the Apple logo Grey screen. I have tried the following: Shift for safemode: it got me through to user login once, but then I hit restart and reset the PRAM and after that no more safe mode success.Safemode now fills up the progress bar to a certain point and then the bar just disappears and I'm left with the spinning gear of infinity. Verbose mode/single user mode: got me to a screen white text ending in: "mac framework successfully initialized using 16384 buffer headers and 10240 cluster I0 buffer headers"There is no input allowed.Target mode successfully gives me the target symbol, but I have not tried to access it as a drive.
I have managed to boot into CMD-R recovery mode and tried to repair my disk. Unfortunately it reads in red 'Error: Disk Utility can't repair this disk....disk, and restore your backed-up files.' Upon 'Verify Disk' it red errors out with: Invalid node structure. The volume Macintosh HD coudl not be verified completely. Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
when I try to do other boot-key combos sometimes it will just turn on for a brief second and then turn back off again. I have never tinkered around inside my machine either.I don't have a current backup, I suppose that is what I will be doing now via target mode. I have also checked for the flashback virus a couple weeks ago and was in the clear.
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Sep 21, 2010
Have an early 20" iMac G5 and the Hard drive started to squeal and then crashed. Tested dive in another iMac and it is definitely bad. Installed new hard drive and the system fails to find it. Formatted it on the other iMac and reinstalled but it still is not seen by the system. Everything was running very well until the drive failure. Took it to an Apple approved store, paid the $60 to be told that the Mother Board was bad. It is hard for me to believe that a disk failure could cause a Mother board failure. 2- 20" iMacs, a 24" iMac, and a new 27" iMac (not yet out of the box.)
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Dec 21, 2010
My 27" iMac that I purchased on Dec 8 2008 had a HD failure. I was running bootcamp and Win 7 and thought I had a virus but the Apple Store geek said the HD was kaput. This has to be a record for short lived HD's on a Mac. And no, I didn't have extended warranty. Anyone else have such a bad experience? My MBP is chugging along and I'm pretty certain I will NOT partition the HD on the Mac when I get it back tomorrow.
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Jun 9, 2012
My external 500g hard drive can be upgraded to Snow Leopard, but the internal 250g hard drive can not be recognised, I 'd tried many times to erase and format it but in vain.
Info:
iMac, iOS 5.0.1
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Mar 12, 2010
We have i-Mac 20" with built in i-sight Power PC, one of last ones I think before the intel. We have had a few problems before with it powering down and going to sleep. Used to hoover dust out and that seemed to fix it.
Now it won't start at all. I have tried all the PRAM and various commands to re set various things but none of these work. We had a wireless keyboard and I have just tried a wired one but I do not think either are connecting as the tab key light does not come on, which it does when I tested the wired on on my lap top.
When it died it crashed with a cd in drive. I have removed this and replaced it with the mac install disk to try and run the disk check but the optical drive is not starting at all either.
All that happens on start up is the sleep light comes on, then after a few moments fan starts to whirl. I can't hear the hard drive - have tried to rock hard drive to get it to spin but nothing.
Just wondering whether worth trying to replace optical drive or is this being controlled by hard drive - hence its not working nor hard drive. is there any way to recover data if it is the hard drive that is dead? anything else I can try and replace to fix it? could I use an external optical drive connected via USB to start?
I have tried to firewire but not joy their either!
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Aug 31, 2010
After replacing the first one due to a surprisingly noisy hard drive, and the replacement itself being returned due to having a massive hardware failure, I'm still not using the iMac I ordered over a month ago. Funny thing is, the second iMac had the same rumbling hard drive as the first which I was prepared to put up with. With no more than a few days of usage, it just stopped working. It's been over a week since the second was returned and the new one hasn't been shipped!
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Sep 21, 2010
My Imac cannot find its hard drive. When I turn it on it shows a folder with a blinking question mark. And even when I go to reinstall the software it can't find a destination. What can I do?
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Oct 6, 2009
I'm running out of space on my Mac Mini's disk because of all my iTunes video files. I am thinking about buying an enclosure for my spare 1 TB hard drive, and using it as the location of my iTunes library, but I wondered how it works with the Mac Mini's energy-savings mode. My Mini is set to sleep after 15 minutes of inactivity, then wake when iTunes content is requested by my Apple TV or Airport Express. I like it, because it's very energy efficient that way! My question is, will the disks also sleep along with my computer, and will they wake properly when the computer wakes?
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Jun 12, 2010
Just experienced a hard drive failure right now on my MacBook (2007). Everything had froze and I shut it down. When I started it again, the screen was dimmed and the Apple jingle went on a louder sound then before. Is this a sure sign of a MacBook hard drive failure or would it be related to something else, for example, the logic board?
Also, what should I do now? Last full backup was 3 weeks ago and I had worked on lots of things between that period of time and now.
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Sep 6, 2009
My IMac crashes sometimes very suddenly, like in a power failure. It doesn't force quit or shut down, it just goes like somebody pulled the plug. It's usually possible to start it up again after 30minutes or an hour. The plug and lead seem to be fine. I tested it on another mac. The obvious suspicion would be overheating, but how can that be caused so suddenly (and how can I fix it)? It's an IMac Intel core duo, 20", 2 ghz, 2gb ram from 2006. I'm running Mac OS X (10.4.11) 2006.
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Nov 4, 2010
Just put a new Hard Drive into my Imac Dual Core. I Know I need to start up from the CD drive to format the disk... I am holding down the "C" key at startup but it isn't reading the drive.
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Sep 15, 2006
I was using my mom's 500 mhz G3 iBook circa 2k1, running 10.2.0 and it decided to start tweaking out on me. Being a somewhat aware computer person, I thought tat a simple restart would fix all of this. Shows you how much I know. Anyway, the boot-up screen showed the icon of the file with the question mark inside. Find the OS 9 CD that we have and I booted up through the CD. I finish starting up and, to my surprise, the drive appears to be erased- the computer asks me if I want to initialize the disk. I hit cancel and proceed to run the disk repair on the OS 9 CD. After it's done scanning, the the results are: "Missing Thread Record, 62078, 4260". What does it all mean? Will the computer be able to recover? What fate lies in store for the iBook?
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Oct 6, 2008
I have a white mb 2.4 250 GB SD. Purchased new in late feb. The hard drive went bad in september. Then in october it happened again. My question is how many time does the hard drive have to go bad before i can get a new computer? If apple updates the macbook how do they determine which config i would get as a replacement? How would it affect apple care? i have registered it already.
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Jan 13, 2010
As I am in the process of replacing a hard drive on a Macbook Pro, I begin to notice that there are MANY posts and experiences of individuals having to replace a dead hard drive at some time or another in their Macbooks. Is this typical? Should this be something I'm prepared to endure? Would it make more sense to buy my own hard drive in addition to a new MBP?
It's ridiculous that I even have to worry about something like this on a new purchase but I'd like to be prepared.
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Mar 21, 2012
My Hard drive has become corrupted and is going to need reformat. I have managed to mount the iMac as a firewire drive on my Macbook and pulled off quite a bit of data. The repair utility wont fix the drive so I have no choice other than to reformat. Â
How do I get Lion back on?
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Nov 25, 2009
I'm a new Mac user for about 6 months now. I bought a used PowerBook G4 15" 1.25 ghz notebook that was in good condition. It was well cared for by the previous owner. Only thing she had done was update the ram to 2 gigs.Recently I began to notice it running slower, programs were freezing and Garage Band couldn't run as many tracks. I installed recommended software updates before it started to get slower and I thought maybe that was the problem.So I attempted to do a fresh swipe of the hard drive and start from nothing. I saved some files and then tried to run the software installation cd. It didn't really help at all. I can't remember the error but it wouldn't let me reinstall OS X even when I held "c" when starting up. At one point I must have clicked run in target mode because I booted it up and it showed an unfamiliar screen. Then I restarted it once again and saw on Disk Utility that S.M.A.R.T. said something about hard drive failure.
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Jan 15, 2008
I was just wondering if anyone could help me with this. the iBook that I just inherited from my aunt, (She got a new MB) was working yesterday, whenever the power shut-off on it. (It has a power issue on the logic board, and if it comes unplugged it dies, even though it has a new battery.) so she went to work, and attempted to power it on, it came up, and the apple was on the screen, and the spinner came up, nad it spun for a very long time, eventually the screen flashed, and turned blue, and the spinner came again. After around 15 minutes, she was given the kernal panic screen. She held down the power button, and restarted, only to come up with the old finder face, and a question mark. I rush over with my disc's, and load up the disk utility. It was repairing the disk, and about 3/4 of the way through, it had an error. So, I rebooted, and we got an apple, and it repeated the previous situation, and gave the blue screen, followed by a kernel panic. This time I ran the hardware test, and it says that the logic board passed, but there was an issued with the harddrive.
At first disk utility could find the hard drive, and it reported it as being a 2 TB drive!!!!!!! So I got suspicous about that, and after the hardware test, the computer was reporting that there was no hard drive in the computer at all. we know for a fact that the drive was either 50, or 80Gb's, (90% sure 80) My question to you is: Is this the hard drive that has gone bad, or, is it the controller on the logicboard needing to be replaced?
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Sep 9, 2009
I'm pretty sure the problems we're having with a white MacBook are due to hard drive problems, but I thought I'd get a second opinion:
- Computer was dropped on a hard floor
- Started making whirring noises and would occasionally lock up or suffer long periods of the spinning wheel
- Disk Utility check, after booting up from the CD, cam back with no errors
- Decided to wipe it and reinstall anyway
- Snow Leopard got stuck halfway through installing, so rebooted. Installation then carried on no problems.
- Still suffering periods of the spinning wheel - it 'shudders' sometimes, rather than spinning smoothly. There have also been a couple of lockups.
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Nov 5, 2009
My iMac G5 is basically dead. Logic board failure. Apple is going to replace it by giving me a credit toward the purchase of a new iMac but that is a different story. I need to send my G5 back to them. Can I take the internal hard drive out and transfer the data to a PC and then get that data off the PC onto an external HD?
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Feb 19, 2012
(i7 27" iMac/256GB SSD + 1TB of internal disk hard drive. (SATA/7200rpm/3.5"))The 1TB internal hard drive on my iMac failed the S.M.A.R.T. Utilities test so Apple called in the computer and I had to have the hard drive replaced. The technicians reloaded the system from a 1TB external Western Digital hard drive; I had backed up the everything on it using Time Machine.
Unfortunately, the iTunes application cannot now locate my iTunes library. I create a lot of slideshows on Aperture and use music from iTunes on the audio tracks. The titles on the audio tracks are now inaudible and are preceded by a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark inside.
how I should re-establish the original link between iTunes and its library. The music files are located in folders (name of artists), within a folder (iTunes Music), within a folder (iTunes), within a folder (Music), within a folder (declangreaney) on the 1TB of internal disk drive.In trying to solve the problem, I went through the folders and double clicked on one song. This opened iTunes so I highlighted and dragged all the other 'artist-named' folders on the iTunes interface and in doing so, I succeeded in accessing all the files.
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3), (i7 iMac/256GB SSD + 1TB Int. HD
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Jun 7, 2012
I have a 1TB GTech GRaid external hard drive, which seems to have gone on the blink. When I start it up it spins into action but then following a small clicking sound winds back down again. It then spins up again, and then with a click winds back down again. This goes on and on and on. What is the best way of hooking up the internals of this drive directly to the Mac Pro? Or is there a better option to start the drive as it stands, without having to open it up?
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Oct 15, 2009
I have a Seagate external hard drive that just stopped working one day (made a lot of clicks then disappeared from my laptop's desktop). When I plug it in to my PC or my Mac, it just makes the clicking sound and then nothing happens.
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Jul 20, 2009
I've just got a new external HD, but it's not being recognised by Mac OS X (10.5.7). I assumed it was because it was in a Windows format, so booted Windows, but it then turned out it wasn't formatted at all. What is the easiest way to make this an HFS+ (the Mac OS extended format), and how do I do it as I can't see it anywhere on the Mac (including Disk Utility)?
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Mar 1, 2012
I've had a lot of problems with my iMac G5 power supply and since I have newer computers I've decided to get rid of this computer.Â
I want to save the hard drive and put it in a case, then use it as an external drive on my other Macs.Â
What sort of case do I need to shop for? Should I look for SATA or what exactly is the proper nomenclature.Â
Is USB 2 the preferred choice, or Firewire, or what? Is there a USB 3? I use a mid-2010 27 inch iMac with the intel processor, and I needed to buy an adapter to use my older Firewire external drive. Is Firewire a dodo?Â
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Feb 18, 2010
I was wondering if anyone had successfully installed and 2nd hard drive in their iMac?I have a 2 year old 2.8 24'' iMac and the performance just isn't cutting the mustard, it's all hard drive related and I already have a decent 1TB drive in there.I was thinking of perhaps swapping the optical drive with a second hard drive for RAID0, but not too sure if there will be space and was wondering if the optical drive is a standard SATA connector, or if there is some way I could run a SATA+power cables externally?
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May 7, 2010
I used SuperDuper to create a mirror image of my SSD boot drive on one of the partitions on the external drive. Thinking it wise to actually check to see if the partition would boot, I used System Preferences to point to the new boot drive and restarted the ol' 2008 8x2.8 Mac Pro.
All seemed well with the startup from the new boot device. But when I tried to go to System Preferences on this system, the app failed without ever initializing a window.
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Dec 25, 2009
I tried searching for info about this, but didn't come up with anything. My company just purchased me a new macbook pro, the 2.26 stock model. I recently bought a 500GB 7200rpm drive, so when the new machine arrived I just swapped out the stock drive with my 500GB. The 500GB has a relatively fresh install of Snow Leopard. Everything is running pretty well, although I feel like I'm seeing a little more sluggishness in some apps (Aperture, for one) than I expected. It's pretty impressive that an OSX boot disk can boot any mac, but I wonder if there's anything I ought to do�preference files I should delete, for example�to make sure that the OS and the new mac are in sync.
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Feb 3, 2010
I inserted the RESTORE CD and held the C key down. I get a message saying: This image has a missing or outdated checksum resource. Select another configuration. I want to clear the HD off so I can donate the computer, or dispose of it as the case may be. No idea what to do about this message.
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Feb 7, 2010
I upgraded the hard drive in my 2006 model white MacBook. It now has a Western Digital WD3200BEVT... 320GB 5400rpm. I recently purchased a new 13 inch MacBook Pro, and would like to put the Western Digital hard drive in the new MacBook Pro. Both computers have Mac OS X 10.6.2 installed.My plan is to open the MacBooks and put the WD into the MBP. I'll boot from the reinstall disc that came with the MBP and install without formatting.
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